7/19/07

"I think it's only a number and it's not really material," said Rob Lutts, chief investment officer of Cabot Money Management. "What's much more important is the fundamental factors in our economy and what those trends are."

"In and of itself, [Dow 13,000] is not very important for the market," said Jay Suskind, director of trading at Ryan, Beck & Co."Psychologically, it shows the market has been doing well and draws retail-type investors," he said. "But this may not be such a good thing, as retail investors often show up late to the party."

12,000 is just a number--just as 11,000 was when the Dow crossed that level six-and-a-half years ago. We surveyed Wall Street prognosticators to see if investors should begin to party like it was 1999 (again). The consensus seems to be that conditions for equity investors are good, but not great.

When it hit 1000 for the first time, which was back in the 60's, I believe, it backed off immediately and took a long, long time for it to get back there, I mean more than ten years, I think. So in that case, it was a high water mark that was not returned to for quite a while. But when you have seen it at other levels, such as say 5000, which was less than four years ago, it just really kept on going. So you can't really make generalizations about what it will do from here. There is, of course, the initial reaction which is, well it's going to go almost -- it's always going to go higher because there is so much euphoria around. But you can't guarantee that, either. It's really a toss up.